A white chip is a fundamental remembrance to an AAA recovering alcoholic to stay on such a path. In a way, so is The White Chip. Its author Sean Daniels means to keep himself working on keeping sober. He is also taking part in a Recovery Project at Florida Studio tackling mental problems like addiction. His play thus fits into both FST’s edgy Stage III Series and Bowen Lab, with its brick-backed stage, minimal scenic elements, and often glaring light.
Saxon Palmer earnestly plays Steven, a pseudonym for Sean, who goes from a teen sneaking an after-school drink to be daring, then grown-up to a lush losing jobs and dear ones. He’s had lots of luck as a professional in theater of types that diminished in import and time as he did. Both the writing and Palmer’s portrayal benefit from Daniels’s humor, without diminishing the seriousness of Steven’s addiction.
Julia Brothers does a believable job portraying Steven’s feminine loves (and sometimes the opposite). She’s particularly well cast as the mother, acting and reacting in sympathetic and just plain pathetic ways. She neatly conveys important past scenes between Steven and his father that are just spoken of, rather than shown.
When it comes to presenting how Steven and his father interact, Michael Flood also provides revelation. Father can’t connect with son in any vital way. Flood is forceful also as a rehab counselor with no-nonsense methods. He and Brothers, when together as Steven’ s parents, show why Steven had to leave home in every sense to come to feel at home fighting addiction.
Aaron Munoz’s direction puts nuance into a few scenes that are basically like short-short stories and then are repeated. He’s also blocked constant such movements like a good choreographer.
If there is any problem with Sean Daniels’ script, it is that it’s overly repetitive. It may be true that many of his failures to abstain or his need “to take just one more” took place in airport lounges. Unfortunately many of these later settings or mentions of them aren’t compelling. It’s a case of repeated truth seeming less true and more like a writer’s failure to express serious situations in ways that don’t sound alike or as lists.
With a bit of winnowing of each failure en route, the hero of The White Chip might make his victorious end even sweeter than it is.
